Limad

In essence every activity we doing at the same time as another one is tied to that activity and any ingagement in one can cause rather mindless engagement in another.

I wonder if it works for our habitual environment in the same way and the scenery of our home where we habitually were engaging in pmo can actually be a trigger pushing us back to pmo to a rather remarkable extent?

I think you're right, Pavlov's idea can apply to us, maybe we get used to searching for something, or "once I'm here or at this point, i do X". Maybe "when empty house then x", or similar. At first its because we made that choice, then our brain reminds us of it after repeatedly doing it